The Car You’re Buying Says a Lot About Your Credit Score

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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The Car You’re Buying Says a Lot About Your Credit Score

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Most people don’t pay cash for cars. They either lease them or finance them. The credit rating range among buyers of car brands varies widely. Luxury car buyers tend to have the best ratings. Buyers of one of America’s best-selling brands have the worst.

Even buyers of the most expensive cars do not have credit rating scores, on average, that put them in the top tier of ratings. That category is called “exceptional,” with a credit rating score of 800 to 850, the highest level. Twenty percent of Americans fall into this category.

The brand with owners with the highest scores when their credit is approved for a car loan is Tesla with an average score of 740, according to Lending Tree. That puts them in the “very good” category, which credit rating agencies use for the 740 to 799 range. Twenty-five percent of Americans fall into this category. At the far end of the scale, buyers of Chryslers have the lowest score of 656, which puts them in the “fair” credit rating category, which makes up 18% of Americans.

Rounding out the top of the credit rating scores by car brands, Porsche drivers approved for car loans have an average score of 727. Porsche is the car brand with the best customer service.

Lexus buyers approved for loans are at 699, followed closely by Volvo at 698 and Audi at 687.

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Joining Chrysler at the bottom of the list, Kia owners have an average score of 659. Nissan owners have an average score of 665.

Why such a large difference in credit scores from the top of the range to the bottom? Likely car prices. The base Tesla Model S has a starting price of $68,750.

By comparison, Chrysler vehicles can be cheap. The Chrysler 300 Sedan has a base price of $29,220. The Chrysler Pacific minivan has a base price of $26,985.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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